CNN Not Teaching to the Test

Media Matters jabs CNN, which has some trouble explaining the causes of climate change itself, for reporting that Americans are confused about the causes of climate change.

There's an interesting dynamic here, where people get their information and understandings from media and then media poll and report on what people know. As if a teacher reported back to her math students that half the class doesn't believe in fractions and then just left it at that, moving on.

A question about the causes of climate change is different from one about attitudes, because it is assessing knowledge, not opinion. Granted, CNN doesn't give its viewers all of their information about climate change (and not all of the poll respondents were CNN viewers), but climate change reporting is systematically bad and news outlets generally are a primary source of information about the world. Poll results like this should be a sign to CNN that something is wrong, not just a story about the political environment.